HISTORICALS & LANDMARKS

Places of Interest

The Farmhouse

Beyond the Mike Strantz designed golf course, Tot Hill Farm has one of the most unique clubhouse and pro shop venues in the form of its vintage farmhouse. The building dates to 1851 with additions in 1905 and 1960. It has been thoughtfully and lovingly restored to retain the old character of the building but serve as a high-traffic epicenter of the Tot Hill experience.

Uwharrie National Forest

Tot Hill Farm is located at the northern tip of the Uwharrie National Forest, a 50,000 acre expanse that includes the Uwharrie Mountains and the confluence of the Uwharrie, Yadkin and Pee Dee rivers. Once entirely cleared for timber and farmland, the woodlands have since returned and provide a haven for a diversity of recreation and wildlife.

The Rock

If the bucolic setting, the farmhouse and the first two holes aren’t enough to make you feel like you’re “not in Oz anymore,” certainly the par-3 third hole will. Mike Strantz built the teeing area around one gargantuan boulder and a dozen or so smaller ones. He even located one configuration of boulders where he built up the space between them with fill dirt, covered it with sod and placed a tee marker.

Andrew Balfour

The area around Tot Hill Farm is rich in Revolutionary War history. Just a few hundred yards from Tot Hill Farm Road southwest of Asheboro lies the Andrew Balfour Family Cemetery. It consists of five graves of the Balfour family and marks the site of the assassination of Colonel Balfour by royalist Tory Forces during the Revolutionary War. From the beginning of the revolutionary movement, Balfour served as a leading advocate and activist in the American cause. 

The Old Dam

The original owners of the Tot Hill Farm site dammed up part of Betty McGee’s Creek years ago and Mike Strantz rebuilt the dam and used it to create the largest water feature on the course. The dam is located near the 11th green and 12th tee and allowed Strantz to build a lake in the corner of the right-to-left, par-four 12th hole. The lake provides beauty and challenge as well as golfers must hit a full carry approach to the peninsula shaped green. 

The Cave

Most elements of the Tot Hill Farm golf experience are perfectly natural, with Mike Strantz simply finding them and burnishing them into golf holes. But The Cave is 100 percent the result of Strantz’s artistry and imagination. He needed a way to build a cart path between the greens of the 10th and 12th holes but believed the aesthetics would be enhanced by burying the path underground and creating what he called “The Cave.”

Strantz's Backyard

Mike Strantz lived in the farmhouse for 18 months in 1998-99 while building the Tot Hill Farm golf course, but he hoped one day to build his own house along the golf course. He picked a lot overlooking the par-three 13th hole, thus the picturesque hole was named Strantz’s Backyard. Sadly his succumbing to cancer in 2005 prohibited his dream of having a getaway home at Tot Hill. 

Betty McGee Creek

Betty McGee’s Creek starts in the Uwharrie Mountains and is named for one of the early settlers of the area dating to the late 1700s. It flows to the west of Tot Hill, where it connects with the Uwharrie River. The creek is omnipresent through the golf course, most noticeably fronting the green of the fifth hole and creating the waterfall cascading behind the green of the 15th hole.